May 2023 Summaries

Axolo, an integration that streamlines code review processes, migrated from Heroku to Digital Ocean. However, one issue they faced was Digital Ocean Apps not supporting a static IP address, which is necessary for some enterprise servers requiring IP address whitelisting. To resolve this, Axolo considered two alternatives: transitioning to a Digital Ocean Droplet or setting up a reverse proxy server. They ultimately decided on the latter and chose to use a third-party service, QuotaGuard.com, due to its simplicity and effectiveness. This solution allowed them to maintain their server's integrity and security while providing a fixed IP address for enterprise communication.

Axolo, a CI/CD notification tool, has released its changelog for May 2023. The update includes new features such as sending ci cd notifications even when the global status is unchanged, automatic email reminders after failed payments, and a new notification system for team channels. Additionally, Axolo now handles requests via proxy for self-hosted instances behind a VPN and added branch protection feature in PR stat for GitHub. The update also includes several improvements and bug fixes to enhance user experience and functionality.

This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to dynamically generate an Open Graph (OG) banner image for a Next.js app using Figma and @vercel/og. The process involves creating a base design in Figma, installing the @vercel/og package, coding the og.tsx file, adding the OG image URL to your page, coding the OG image with dynamic data, testing the result, and deploying the project. This technique can be used to create eye-catching banners for various types of web content, enhancing their visibility on social media platforms.

Agency Analytics, a platform for marketing agencies and consultants, reduced its PR cycle time by 65% with the help of Axolo. The company's CTO and cofounder, Blake Acheson, explained that they have around 50 to 60 engineers from eight different teams using Axolo. The integration between GitHub and Slack has significantly improved their code review process and bolstered their trunk-based development approach. With the visibility of code reviews in Slack, Agency Analytics can deploy changes to production swiftly. Overall, Axolo has been a fantastic improvement for the company's engineering operations.

The official GitHub Slack integration is limited in its customization options and functionality. It notifies each engineer individually instead of warning only the rest of the team, alerts the whole team for each action, making it hard to keep track of important actions due to noise, and doesn't allow for conversation within the GitHub channel. Axolo is an alternative solution that offers more customizable features such as support for ephemeral channels, two-way synchronization, daily pull request reminders, CI/CD notifications in Slack, PR recaps for stand-ups, and code review time slots to help developers stay focused on their tasks. Many users have switched from the official GitHub integration to Axolo for a better development workflow.

This guide provides a step-by-step process for creating a custom script in Zsh terminal that automatically opens the current GitHub pull request for the repository being worked on. The script requires jq and hub to be installed, and it checks if the user is inside a Git repository before proceeding. If there's no corresponding pull request, the script prompts the user to create one. The guide also explains how to make the script executable and add an alias for easy access in the terminal.